Posts by quarky 72 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2010
If we have reached "Peak VMWare", it seems odd timing. A lot of admins I know still like traditional GUIs and hate the webclient with a passion (I never thought it was *that* bad). I guess I would have thought that given the rapidly diminishing gap in feature set and performance applicable to a lot of companies compared to Hyper-V, VMware would be trying to please the people using their products, not piss them off.
"We are concerned with both, but the higher volume of people are the Windows 7 people, and the Windows 8 people are more likely to be tech enthusiasts and more adaptable."
It is pretty sad that so many IT people don't seem to be tech enthusiasts these days. That isn't a dig that those who dislike Windows 8, or those on El Reg, but a reflection of the sad state of many IT people these days.
Given Google's refusal to make their the vast majority of their apps available on the Windows platform, they are not exactly being co-operative and open either. Both sides need to sit down and do a deal, but given that Google don't want more competition from Windows Phone, and that Microsoft don't want to give up a healthy revenue stream, I can't see it happening too soon.
"Running a manufacturing business on low margins when you buy raw material in $, set your prices and make sales in euro and pay your taxes in GBP is trickier."
I guess we could always cut manufacturing red-tape by leaving the EU, this retaining the flexibility of our own currency and improving efficiency at same time.
The EU with it's "thou shalt not" attitude over individual action around attracting business, and it's drive towards "harmonization" (in other words removing competition by trying to make all countries adopt the same tax rates and policies) is just making the Eurozone (and EU) less attractive to business.
"What we all want"
Speak for yourself. I (and clearly others) find the new interface and start menu to be a huge step forward from the Start button which is not that far removed from how it was in 1994. I also like the new functionality that TIFKAM brings while still having the ability to run my legacy apps.
"We are not paid by Microsoft to fuck around all day fighting a user interface that we did not ask for and would dearly love to be shot of!"
I am paid to do a job, not being an obstacle to progress because I am afraid of change, or don't want to learn new things. Still, your comment sounds eerily familiar from those days migrating from Netware to Windows NT. Don't worry, there will always be people like you!
"Why does a car have a steering wheel, a bike handle bars and a horse have reigns?"
<slaps head>
Reading some of these comments almost makes me ashamed to work in IT. A car, a horse, and a bike have completely different methods of movements and working. You turn a bike by leaning and steering the front single wheel AWAY from the turn (at anything other than slow speed), while a car is turned by turning the front two wheels IN to the turn. Just because they both "go" doesn't mean they work the same way. Similarly, the throttle on a bike has much more control than just "faster/slower". Throttle control is critical to control and stability of a bike through a turn, and even in a straight it is vastly more important than in a car, hence the requirement for a much more subtle touch (and hands rather than feet). A horse, well, obviously a horse is an animal so you give it an instruction and hope it goes the way you want it to. However you slice it, you are going to have to learn three methods of operation because they are all completely different beasts that are made to "go" in fundamentally different ways.
A PC/phone/tablet pretty much all work the same way. In all cases you input instructions (typically via a keyboard and/or mouse but these days also with a touch screen (either as well or instead)) and tasks are run on the CPU, data is retrieved and processed, and displayed back to you. The difference is purely device size. Some are convenient to hold in one hand, some are not convenient to hold at all, but a 8" Windows tablet works the same as a desktop with a 40" screen running Windows. The same for Android. The difference is that some (most these days) smaller devices (phones and tablets) have a touch screen. Some laptops and desktops also have a touch screen. That is often an additional control method, or a replacement control method. However, if you know how the OS works, and you how to find an application, start an application, control and application etc, whether you do that by pressing on the screen with your finger, or moving a mouse pointer there and clicking, IS THE SAME. The difference in required learning between leaning a new way to activate an appilcation (press with your stylus or finger vs click with a mouse) is much less than learning a new (going from an XP like interface on one device to a Win8 interface on another).
I thought all that would be obvious, but I guess not.
As for a touch screen on a desktop/laptop, it is an ADDITIONAL interface. It doesn't stop you using a mouse or keyboard. It isn't one of the other. Having said that, why don't you ask people who have worked with touch screens for years? Certainly the ones in the ticket office at St Pancras find them very useful, but I suppose they haven't been told yet that they should be having back pain etc.
It is just like the Kindle e-ink debate. The number of times I have been told that I must get eye strain by reading from a tablet instead of an e-ink... The same tribal blinkering here.
Errr no, but nice try. User satisfaction has often fallen in previous cases after an upgrade because users need to get used to a new work environment, and there is a learning curve.
As for XP, I can only assume you were not around then when "Teletubbie Windows" was released.
"But the launch has been overshadowed by criticisms about pricing, the bundling of unwanted features and Microsoft's all-powerful market position."
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/1830275/windows-xp-mixed-reception
"Research firm Gartner predicts that most consumers won't switch operating systems until they buy new PCs. Gartner predicted tepid initial sales, which would be in line with the lukewarm reception received by Windows Me and Windows 2000 last year."
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-274939.html
Or this one from December 2003 (from than two years after XP's launch):
"By contrast AssetMetrix found that only 7% of the PCs companies were using had the latest Windows operating system, XP, installed. Windows 2000 was the most popular operating system."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3324471.stm
So many people are missing the point. Metro is there to provide a consistent interface across different devices, so you don't need to learn three different ways of doing things across three different platforms (PC, tablet, phone). I think most people would consider that a great idea if it wasn't MS pushing it.
The problem is, people don't like change. XP was hated when it came out too but it went on to be a great success. I think most of the public are starting to come around to Windows 8 too. Certainly in our company where we have rolled it out, many in management were concerned. I still have an email from a senior manager talking about a "growing groundswell against Windows 8", yet it has been our smoothest, most successful, and most well received upgrade since, well, ever, and I remember the move from Windows 98!! That isn't just anecdotal. User satisfaction (yes, I hate that too) with IT has risen more than 8% in a year since the rollout.
13% is not a huge market share, but it continues to grow, even in these times where many companies don't need to run the latest and greatest, and that is no disgrace.
Ultimately though, there will always be those bitter about anything MS, and resistant to change, that is human nature to some degree, but thankfully, the innovation doesn't stop, and we will continue to see progress.
People are starting to realise that e-ink isn't actually that great compared to a modern LCD screen, especially if you are not doing most of your reading in direct sunlight.
Generally, the massive amount of functionality that a tablet provides compared to a single purpose device like an e-ink Kindle more than makes up for those rare times when then tablet isn't practical for reading on.
"Interestingly, however, for web browsing over cellular networks, Android actually edges iOS, with 34.4 per cent of all mobile web traffic versus 32.8 per cent for iOS:"
Andoid users are smart enough to use the correct device for the correct task. If you want a full browser experience, desktop/laptop is still the best. So when in the office/home, it is probably stil the case that a lot of people use a ful lsize device with a full size keyboard and monitor, and of course support for all the major websites and technologies (obviously this won't be the case for long, but for now it is probably a valid assumption).
Perhaps people who spent hundreds on an iPad feel that they need to use it, even when better options are avaiable, to justify the expense?
"..employing Windows Server Datacenter Edition. For these organizations "8 extra Windows Server instances" comes "free" and the cost of server resources required to run the entire System Center suite is just a rounding error."
I thought Data Center comes with an ability to run an unlimited number of VM's. Where does the limit of eight come from?
"The figure doesn't include freebies, either."
So all of you talking about freebies, go back and read the article.
Personally I think this is fantastic news. More people reading (even if it is trash) is always a good thing. I know that I have read more books this year already than in the last three years combined.
"This includes Array Software 6.0, which turns the disk clusters into a SAN and automatically virtualizes and optimizes the placement of data on the arrays."
So this means that as well as striping across disks, we can strip the entire thing across several Equallogic units? I hope so, we have been waiting for that..
I still don't understand why they convert the heat to electricity. There are vacuum diodes that can do this already, and since efficiency isn't the key requirement here, they are probably quite suitable. I did suggest this approach during the competition, but didn't get anywhere :(
"Now if they can make the lorrys all follow each other and not mess about trying to overtake each other - clogging up the motorway in the process, then I think they'd really be onto something."
Don't forget one truck at 56mph in Lane 1, and the other at 56.1mph in Lane 2. Effectively turning the M1 into a rolling roadblock.
I have Diablo 3. I have put about in about 1.5 - 2 hours a day, since Monday. Not once have I had any problems playing it.
Some people just need to have something to moan about. If you go to the official forums, there are even people "demanding" compensation (yes, real money), because Blizzard made changes to the game.. Incredible.
What?
Previously: Amazon buy the product at an agreed price from the publishers. Any discounting done by Amazon reduces their profits, and reduces the costs to the consumer. = more books sold.
Now: Amazon buy the product at the agreed price from the publishers, and must sell the product at the price agreed with the publisher. Increased cost passed to consumer = less books sold.
A race against time for Lewis to convince people that journalists know more then climatologists about the climate. Shot in 80's style, which cheesy music, freeze-frame effects, and plenty of rubbish special effects, and of course Lewis completely and utterly misinterpreting even the most basic whitepapers.
The ending is a race against time after Lewis is buried under an avalanche of his own making (from print outs from conspiracy sites), and he is rescued just in time to be mocked in public again as he gets his next article into El Reg.
No it wasn't how they were sold. Publishers set a recommended price and companies like Amazon could turn around and see at whatever price they wanted.
The new model pushed by apple (the agency model) means that for those books, Amazon cannot discount them, and must sell that at whatever price the publisher decides. So that 20 year old Stephen King ebook is still £4.99.
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